Anti Captain Swan/Hook
Why I don't ship Captain Swan It has nothing to do with disliking the concept of Hook as a character. While he’s done a lot I don’t like, until the Captain Swan angle started, I was okay with Hook’s existence. I hated his role in the Rumbelle story, but that ended up all right, so that’s fine. The course of true love never did run smooth and all that. It has nothing to do with disliking Colin O’Donoghue. Colin is a fantastic actor. I love watching him. I think he’s doing a great job with what A&E have given him to work with. I loved him on The Tudors, and I hope his new project goes well. So well, in fact, that he leaves Once to focus on movies full-time. Here’s why I don’t like the pairing: Captain Swan has lead to a lot of out-of-character behavior and character de-evolution, and it promotes rape culture. Let’s be clear here: I am not calling Hook a rapist. Although, being a pirate, he probably has done some ravishing in the past—since we haven’t seen that, I can’t claim it as fact. Also—we saw past!Hook try to get Emma drunk for sexual profit, and it backfired. But that’s beside the point. Rape culture is more than just the act of rape—as if there could be a “just” there. Rape culture treats women as commodities, as prizes to be won. Hook told Emma that he would win her heart (3.7 “Dark Hollow”). In the season finale, we see that Emma has in fact become a prize for Hook. Because he’s done “enough” good things, he is rewarded with a love interest. Never mind that he’s done a slew of bad things in the past. Never mind that he left Emma locked in a cell. Never mind that he traded Eric’s life for his ship. Never mind that he helped Cora try to destroy everything. Never mind that he’s never been honest about the full history between him and Baelfire/Neal. AND never mind that Emma has consistently told him that she wasn’t interested in him. He forced himself on Emma when he found her in New York—sure, he was trying to break a curse with True Love’s Kiss, but it didn’t work, ergo, it’s not True Love. If it were True Love, even Emma’s memory change couldn’t have stopped it. Sleeping curses can’t hold back the power of True Love. Hell, having your heart ripped out can’t stop True Love. He finally cons—I mean, convinces—Emma that he’s a good guy (internet nice guy much?) and so he must be rewarded with a love interest, even if she’d said “no” repeatedly before that point. A woman becomes the reward for good (or at least not bad) behavior. This would seem to imply that there needs to be a reward for goodness, rather than goodness being standard human courtesy toward others. Goodness is seen as the means to an end, something to be applauded in and of itself. This also leads to the impression that “no” doesn’t mean “no” but rather it means “not yet” or “keep trying and I’ll eventually cave.” What kinds of lessons are these to put across? Another issue I have with Captain Swan is that it treats Emma as incomplete without a man. We see her have to say goodbye to Neal. It was heartbreaking for me, since I’m a diehard Swanfire shipper. But even if you don’t believe that Neal was Emma’s True Love, you have to admit that watching the father of one’s child die is traumatic. Rather than being allowed to process her grief and surprise, Emma is repeatedly shoved toward Hook. She ends up losing her magic to save his life. That’s an Emma move, as we’ve seen her risk life and limb to save others, even those she doesn’t like (Regina in Season One) or she doesn’t know (Marian in Season Three). But it illustrates that Hook isn’t good for Emma. He makes her less than whole, rather than completing her. After all that, Emma is shown to be vulnerable without a man. She’s made to seem as if she has to have a man to be whole. This ends up making Emma, and women as a whole, seem less than fully developed unless they’re in a relationship. She’s immediately thrown into a romance—one that she has consistently turned down and denied wanting—without having any time to be her own woman. Gone is the badass woman who could stand on her own that we’ve seen throughout the series. Gone is the fiercely strong mother and daughter—in her place is a washed-out figure who is defined, both by the show and by many of the fans, as solely existing as a love interest for Hook. In the end, it’s not that Captain Swan could never have worked. The problem I have is that A&E approached this in such a ham-handed, thoughtless way. Rather than showing us a natural progression of the relationship between Hook and Emma, the writers went from 0 to True Love in the course of one two-hour finale. That is what makes me so mad. An Actual Honest Conversation Between Hook and Neal * Hook: We got caught up in so much nonsense over...a women. * Neal: Which one? * Hook:... * Neal: You know... * Hook:... * Neal: Milah or Emma? * Hook:... * Neal: Cause if you're gonna bitch about the women in both our lives you've wanted to bang, I'd at least like to know if it's my mother or the mother of my child we're talking about. * Hook:... * Neal:... AND THE WORST OF THEM ALL IS: